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Morial rounded out his talk by laying out the skeleton of a public policy plan that would address the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

What Successful Rebuilding Would Require:

• The Federal Government should make an unequivocal commitment to build the levee system along with a first rate flood control system. We could use the Netherlands, a country entirely under sea level, as a model. This country uses the principle of redundancy (i.e. having a 2nd, 3rd, and 4th line of defense against flooding.)
• The government should inspect/review every levee along the Gulf Coast besides those in New Orleans.
• We need to confront whether or not climatory changes are affecting hurricanes in a way that’s going to be long term. Scientific evidence shows that warmer water temperatures can increase the risk of flooding.
• The Army Corp of Engineers and all Emergency Preparedness Initiatives must change the paradigm from the Hurricane Betsy paradigm which suggested that levees should at most, withstand a Category 3 hurricane, to a more updated paradigm.
• 50 billion dollars in government appropriations would be sufficient to rebuild levees and handling flooding problems. According to Senator Mary Landrieu, this money should come from redirecting the dividends from off shore oil/gas revenues for 10 years to a fund created for this issue.

A Victims’ Compensation Plan:

• Using the 9/11 model in which each victim was

compensated for loss of life or injury, each victim of Hurricane Katrina should be allotted $200,000, with the assumption that there were 1,000,000 victims. The cost of this program would be 20 billion dollars. As rationale, consider three facts,
? The cost of the FEMA trailers being given to each family is over $100,000 alone for building, transport, set-up, and maintenance.
? Hurricanes are predictable events whereas 9/11 was not, and the government still did not prepare.
? The 9/11 model worked.
• The government needs to re-engineer FEMA to deal with the disasters of today. It specifically needs to rebuild the Disaster Preparedness and Response infrastructure. Moreover, Congress should write the qualifications of FEMA Heads into law.

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